Inhuman Remains

Sixteen

My battery life didn’t look good as I called Alex Guinart, and told him of the arrangements I had made for my boy and his dog. He promised that he would help them both pack: clothes and Game Boy for Tom, harness, lead and food for Charlie, and passports for them both.

I asked him to tell Tom that I would come to Monaco for him as soon as I could, although I had no idea of what that meant in real terms.

‘There is no sign of your aunt, I’m afraid,’ he said, as I was about to hang up. I hadn’t even thought to ask him: if there had been, that would have been the first thing he’d have told me. I could feel no optimism on that front. Adrienne would not have walked off on an errand without her bag or her phone, far less her great-nephew, and if she’d had an accident or a stroke anywhere about the house, Tom or Charlie would have found her.

I’d neglected to tell him before about Fanette’s mystery caller; I filled in that gap in his knowledge.

‘A woman, she said?’

‘Yes. German or Swiss accent. But if it was who I think it might have been, don’t go looking for her in your neighbourhood. I’m supposed to be meeting her here in a few hours.’

‘And you’re still going to?’

‘That’s my plan.’

‘Primavera. .’

As he began to protest my phone gave an ominous ‘beep’. ‘Got to go,’ I said. ‘My battery’s dying.’ I ended the call.

I sat in my stone alcove, watching the ducks and thinking about where I was at. I looked around. The garden was still almost deserted; away in the distance I saw a man, tossing chunks of bread to the geese, but apart from him I was alone. It had just gone eleven thirty, three hours before I was due to meet Lidia Bromberg, and the sun was about to reach my refuge. Once it did, I wouldn’t be able to stay there for long.

Just as its first rays fell upon my feet, my mobile surprised me by ringing again. It was Mark Kravitz. ‘I’ve got some news for you,’ he began, ‘courtesy of a journalist contact of mine. The man that the police in Seville have now identified as Hermann Gresch died from a massive overdose of morphine, some time yesterday afternoon. They’ve got it down either as accidental death or suicide. Apparently there were empty capsules all over the place; on the face of it, Gresch was an addict with a big habit.’

‘And two different identities.’

‘The local police don’t know that yet, although they soon will. I’ve tipped a contact in the Guardia Civil to the fact; they should be getting in touch with Seville any minute now. If this is a scam, then it’s about to blow up, Prim. If it is, then for the sake of the investors we can only hope they haven’t moved the money yet.’

My phone beeped again. ‘Mark, my battery’s going dead.’

‘And so might you if you keep that date with Bromberg. You really mustn’t do it.’

I yielded to his judgement: by that time it was in line with my own. ‘Okay, I give in,’ I said. ‘Things have happened back in St Martí to help persuade me.’

‘What?’ he exclaimed.

‘It looks as if my aunt’s been snatched.’

‘And your son?’

‘Tom’s okay. He’s under guard and Conrad Kent’s on his way to get him and take him to Susie’s.’

‘That’s good; you’ve done something sensible at last. Now let me think. If Frank’s mother’s been kidnapped, that means. .’

My phone beeped again and he was cut off in mid-sentence. I looked at it and saw that the battery indicator was solid red. ‘Bugger,’ I swore softly.

I checked my bag, to confirm that my passport was there, plus my cash and credit cards. Clickair had been the sort of operation that requires photo ID: although I’d booked only a one-way flight, it hadn’t been full and I was pretty confident that I’d be able to get on one that day, back to Barcelona. As I’d said to Mark, I had definitely given up on the idea of meeting Bromberg, or of looking any further for Frank in Sevilla. His mother had become my priority, although God alone knew what I was going to do about her.

With a degree of regret I left the gardens of the Real Alcázar. They had been truly peaceful, and I made myself a quiet promise that I would take Tom there one day, when he was old enough not to wonder where the play zone was. Heading out of the palace I shuffled down the side of the cathedral into Constitution Avenue, then across, into a maze of side-streets. It didn’t take me long to find what I was after: an Internet café. I took an empty terminal, logged on to the clickair website and bought myself a ticket on the six o’clock flight to Barcelona. Then, on a whim, I switched over to the electronic edition of Diario de Sevilla, and checked the latest entries.

There was a brief story on the discovery of a man’s body in a street near the ayuntamiento, following an anonymous tip, but that was all. I went to the newspaper site’s search facility and entered the name ‘Lidia Bromberg’: I drew a complete blank. I tried again with George Macela, but once more came up with nothing. Finally I entered ‘Roy Urquhart’. . and made a connection. The piece that appeared on screen was a year old, a feature about the Hotel Casino d’Amuseo project, built around an interview with my cousin. Yes. It was Frank, no doubt about it: his unmistakable image stared out at me from the centre of the article, those Asiatic eyes, that smile, managing to be modest yet dazzling at the same time.

I read it slowly. It was the same pitch that Bromberg had given me when I had called her two days before, only more so. Frank. . or Roy. . was selling it as the greatest thing to hit Sevilla for the last hundred years and more, and the journalist who had written the puff seemed to be buying it, and him, hook line and sinker. Lidia Bromberg hadn’t said anything about the golf course, but he had. This wasn’t going to be just another flat course for hackers and old men. Oh, no, they had the agreement of the European golf tour to staging an event within three years, and to taking the Ryder Cup there in 2018. I found myself wondering if anyone had told the European tour officials. Overall, though, the piece was wonderful publicity for the project. I couldn’t help but admire Frank’s natural ability as a salesman, and wonder at his ability to pitch so effectively a proposition that I feared more and more was a total fraud.

I was still smiling at his effrontery as I closed the window. There was one more thing that I wanted to do. I found the official website of the city council, entered ‘Caballero’ in its search facility, and clicked.

And there he was, Señor Don Emil Caballero i Benitez, the man I’d seen going into number forty-seven just before Hermann Gresch had taken his last and fatal fix: he wasn’t an official, he was a member of the bloody council, and a pretty senior one, by the look of it. He was thirty-eight years old, a ‘retail businessman’ by occupation, with a record of involvement in civic government that stretched back for nine years, and currently held responsibility for planning matters. ‘And as bent as a corkscrew, I’ll bet,’ I whispered, as I closed the window and shut down the terminal.

I paid the clerk, and checked my watch: it was half past twelve, and I was done in Sevilla. I needn’t have gone back to the hotel. I had left nothing there that was irreplaceable, and they had a print of my credit card to take care of my room charges. There was nothing stopping me hailing a taxi and heading straight for the airport, except, when I thought about it, that my phone charger was still on the dressing-table. It might be difficult to replace that at short notice, and I was beginning to feel out of touch already, after only an hour without my mobile. I decided I could afford to go back, give it a quick charge, then check out properly.

I took a circuitous route to the hotel, one that didn’t take me past the ayuntamiento, where I might just have bumped into friend Caballero, or past Calle Alvarez Quintero forty-seven, where that greasy bastard of a shopkeeper might have spotted me and shouted, ‘Policia!’, ‘Puta!’ or something equally inconvenient and embarrassing. Given my slow rate of progress, it was well after one when I got back, and by that time the streets were quiet, the shops having closed for lunch and the punters having gone home or off to a tapas bar. I looked around as Las Casas de los Mercaderes came into sight. The entrance to the narrow, pedestrianised street was all but blocked by a big black car, but at that hour it wasn’t causing any problems; even if it was still there when I called a taxi, there was plenty of room for it to get past.

Mind you, I thought, as I picked up my key, that’s if I go to the airport. The idea of fronting up Bromberg hadn’t gone away completely. But as I considered it afresh, I decided that there would be precious little point. Frank was gone, and possibly dead, as Macela/Gresch certainly was. As I saw it, the chances might even be that Councillor Caballero was tying off all the loose ends and that Lidia could be running for her own life.

Only. . As I stepped out of the lift, Mark Kravitz’s final words came back to me, those he had been in the middle of forming when my mobile died on me. ‘If Frank’s mother’s been kidnapped, that means. .’

I had just realised what it meant as I opened my door, and saw that decisions on my immediate future had been taken out of my hands.